


on standard deviations;

by crossroadswrite



Series: on life and love; [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, POV Alternating, Retirement, Schmoop, time jumps, y'all they just love each other and their kids a lot okay like that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 05:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossroadswrite/pseuds/crossroadswrite
Summary: “Daddy, I have something for you!” Mariko says, all heart-shaped beaming smile that creases little dips into one of her chubby cheeks. Yuuri reaches out to push the hair that is clinging to her cheek with the sea water back behind her ear.“Oh, what is it?” he asks, giving her a little smile.“Tada!” Mariko says, opening her hands to reveal a small perfectly shaped little shell. “I found it when I was burying Beka!”(Or: local power couple continue loving each other and both their children a lot, but are getting real tired of waiting for best kazakh boy to become their son-in-law officially.)





	on standard deviations;

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minime/gifts).



> Firstly, biggest shoutout to [savedbythenotepad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savedbythenotepad/pseuds/savedbythenotepad) for doing me a beta of this, you're an angel and I'd die for you Precious!! Y'all should check her out she writes some real cool stuff.
> 
> Secondly, this is more my wife whomst I love and would die for but at this point y'all knew this. You should congratulate her she just did her last exam for the semester and I! Am! So! Unbelievably! Proud! Of! Her!!!!!!!!! YOU'VE BEEN DOING SO WELL SWEETHEART and putting in so much work, I am SO PROUD, I love watching you go out and absolutely GET IT!!!! And I'm sorry this is like fifty-nine months late and that you deserved this a while back!! But it is done!!! And I hope you like it!!! It is my absolute privilege to continuously watch you succeed <3<3<3

[one]

As a kid, Yuuri  _ loved _ beach trips with his family. He loved putting all his brightly coloured sand toys into a bucket and dragging it along, bumping on the boardwalk floor every now and then as Yuuri held his mom’s hand tight in his own and talked excitedly about all the castles they would build. He loved having water fights with Mari and when her and Dad would throw him around in the ocean. He loved sitting under an umbrella and getting his fingers sticky with fruit and juice. He loved walking along the beach and finding pretty shells for his mother and Mari.

Hasetsu’s beach is wonderful for family trips. The ocean isn’t too rowdy during the summer, the sand is clean, and the water isn’t freezing. Yuuri feels a certain sense of nostalgia about those times.

“Daddy!” Mariko says, running to him with something cupped between her hands. She stumbles up to his towel and Yuuri reaches out a hand to steady her. “Daddy, I have something for you!” she says, all heart-shaped beaming smile that creases little dips into one of her chubby cheeks. Yuuri reaches out to push the hair that is clinging to her cheek with the sea water back behind her ear.

“Oh, what is it?” he asks, giving her a little smile, eyes wandering over her face and shoulders to make sure there’s no redness. He should check his alarm to see how long ago he put sunscreen on her.

Mariko takes after Victor in many aspects, from how she thrives in social environments and loves to meet people and make friends, to her heart-shaped smile. But luckily she did not inherent Victor’s complexion, and doesn’t burn as easily. Thank  _ god _ . The amount of fretting Yuuri had to do over Yura when he was younger – and  _ still _ has to do, who is he kidding, that boy thinks he’s above the sun – was enough to last him a lifetime.

“Tada!” Mariko says, opening her hands to reveal a small perfectly shaped little shell. “I found it when I was burying Beka!”

“That’s so prett- when you were  _ what? _ ” Yuuri asks, startled. He looks over her shoulder, closer to shore where he had left both Otabek and Yura to take care of Mariko, and sees Yura pilling sand onto Otabek’s back as Otabek just lays there, head resting on his folded arms, looking like he’s taking a nap.

“He likes turtles,” Mariko says, “so we’re turning him into one.”

At this point, Yuuri really  _ really _ should know better than to leave Otabek at the mercy of Yura and Mariko. Otabek is a very good boy and a strong skater, but he is ridiculously weak willed when it comes to Yura or to Mariko, or, worse, Yura  _ and _ Mariko.

“Of course you are,” Yuuri sighs.  “Thank you for the shell, Machan. It’s really pretty.”

Mariko beams so hard her eyes almost squint shut. “I’m gonna go finish my turtle,” she announces, running off back to Yura and Beka.

“Don’t bother Otabek too much,” Yuuri shouts after her weakly.

“Okay!” Mariko shouts back, and then proceeds to barrel straight into Yura, almost tipping him over, before they both start piling sand all over Otabek again.

Family beach trips have mutated through the years, evolved, and Yuuri misses how they used to be in that nostalgic kind of way that you always hold close to your heart, but he loves this too. He loves coming to the beach with his own family, his own kids. He loves getting random pretty shells they find at the beach, he loves swimming around in the ocean and playing games with them. He loves peeling fruit for them and making sure they’re well-fed and have their sunscreen on.

It can be a little frazzling at times, especially with a kid that used to have a penchant for running off or trying to swim on his own and another kid that is too sociable for her own good.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?” someone asks, their shadow falling over Yuuri and making him look up.

“I’m saving it for my husband,” he says.

Victor plops himself down on the towel next to him, leans over to kiss him on the cheek. “Oh, is that right? Is he prettier than me?”

Yuuri hums a little in assent. “The prettiest man I’ve ever seen,” he says, and watches the bridge of Victor’s nose and the tips of his ears get a little redder. It’s completely and utterly ridiculous how even after over ten years of marriage they still get to each other like this.

“Sounds like a lucky guy,” Victor says, shifting so they’re sitting closer together, and plopping down the bag from the kombini not far from the beach into Yuuri’s lap. They’d miscalculated how much food they’d go through in a day at the beach and Victor had run off to get more snacks for them.

Yuuri peers into the bag to see a mix of their everyone’s favourites, and some sodas that he quickly transfers into the cooler.

“How have they been behaving?” Victor asks, eyes running the length of the beach until they land on where Yura and Mariko are still hard at work burying Otabek in sand.

“They’re turning Otabek into a turtle,” Yuuri informs him. “And Machan brought me another pretty shell.” He takes it off the smaller toy bucket that he had commandeered to safe-keep every pretty rock and shell Machan brought him, and shows it to Victor.

“Cute,” Victor says, his smile all creased laugh lines in the corners of his eyes and fondness.

Yuuri puts it back into the bucket carefully not to break or chip it. At the end of the summer they’ll choose the prettiest ones and either try some DIY and use them to decorate a mug or to make a frame, or they’ll send it to one of Yuuri’s old high school friends who makes glass centerpieces where she can put the shells inside the glass and make it look pretty.

“Do you think they’re dating yet?” Victor asks, watching over Yura and Otabek.

“I think they’d tell us.”

Victor leans back onto his hands so he can watch and tan at the same time. Yuuri gives himself a mental alarm of ten minutes before he forces more sunscreen on Victor. Sunburn is not fun for anyone involved.

“Should we do something? Maybe a little…. nudge.”

“Don’t meddle, Vitya.”

“It’s not meddling if it’s done out of love,” Victor says primly.

Yuuri turns to him and tries not to ogle him too much. It’s rude to ogle in public. “You sound like your mother,” Yuuri tells him. And Yuuri loves Victor’s mother almost as much as he loves Minako, but she tends to be a bit…. meddling.

“Which one?”

“Vivi,” Yuuri says.

“Maybe Mama was onto something all along…” he edges.

“Maybe we shouldn’t meddle in our son’s love life and let him figure it out on his own,” Yuuri says, lifting an unimpressed eyebrow. Victor is very studiously trying not to look at him.

“But it’s taking them  _ so long _ .”

“Yuri is barely twenty-two now. They have  _ time _ .”

Yuuri worries about a lot of things when it comes to Yura. He worries that he works too much, he worries that he’s taken a little too much after Yuuri himself and throws himself into skating with absolutely no thought to his own physical well-being. He worries where Yura will go when he’s out of his competitive years. He worries about his absolutely ridiculous sense of direction and how lost he gets in foreign countries. But in this?

Yuuri doesn’t worry.

He doesn’t worry because he trusts Otabek, and Yuuri has been watching and taking care of both of them for years, he’s seen them develop, grow closer and closer, grow comfortable.

Victor and Yuuri had very much what could be called a whirlwind romance. They were engaged with a family in less than a year. They were all strong emotions and pushing boundaries and taking leaps of faith backwards with their eyes closed every other week.

Yura and Otabek go about their relationship like they have all the time in the world to figure it out, to be dumb and blind about it, to be oblivious about it. Yuri and Otabek will get there, surely, at some point.

It’s not a surefire thing. Yuuri doesn’t presume to know exactly what Yura wants or what Otabek wants, he can’t know that they’ll even become more than friends. But Yura’s answers to a lot of questions about his future have the word “Beka” tacked onto them, almost thoughtlessly, in the same way that Yuuri’s answers about his future have had “Victor” tacked onto them for a long time.

“At this rate, they’re going to take five years to start dating,” Victor says, and then a little more poutily, “I want to plan a wedding.”

“Hm, I say within a year they’re dating,” Yuuri says.

“Wanna bet on it?” Victor asks, eyebrow raised in defiance.

Yuuri smirks. “Sure. If I win I want a repeat of our vacation in Brazil,” Yuuri tells him, and watches Victor’s eyes widen a little, cheeks flushing.

“I don’t think I’m that bendy anymore, darling.”

Yuuri trails his eyes slowly up and down Victor, making sure he lingers. “We can fix that.”

Victor’s cheeks get redder. Yuuri’s smirk grows. “If you’re going to be like that, I want a repeat of your first World’s gold celebration.”

“Absolutely not,” Yuuri says, immediately. “The last time we did that I almost broke your neck. I’m too heavy!”

Victor’s smile looks a little dreamy and full of a blissed out kind of acceptance. “If I die, I die.”

Yuuri smacks him on the stomach. “Don’t  _ say that _ .”

“It sounds to me like you’re afraid of losing,” Victor singsongs and Yuuri knows this is a trap. He knows this  _ very well _ .

“ _ Fine _ . I accept your terms. I say after the upcoming competitive season they’ll be dating,” he says, offering his hand for Victor to shake.

“And I say before the season starts,” Victor says and shakes Yuuri’s hand, before grabbing it and kissing the back of it. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, sweetheart. Literally”

Yuuri snorts a little. “You better start joining me for Yoga again, Vitya. I’m not losing.”

(Yuuri wins the bet. By next summer Yuri and Otabek are officially dating.)

 

 

[two]

Victor loves quiet mornings where he gets to sit at the breakfast aisle and go through his emails as Yuuri cooks breakfast. Makkachin asleep under his feet, already well-fed and more than ready for his first eight hour long nap of the day. There’s something incredibly calming in watching Yuuri move about a kitchen, sometimes humming, sometimes bouncing along to their morning’s playlist.

Victor had once shared this with Yuuri when Yuuri had caught him staring at him at the very beginning of the creation of this little ritual of theirs, and to his absolute delight Yuuri had only nodded like he understood and said he felt the same when he watched Victor make lunch.

“Dad!” Mariko shouts, skidding into the room in her socks and trying not to trip over Sochi who has always done his very best to make moving around at a speed above calmly walking completely impossible.

Yuuri and Victor both turn to her at the same time, watching her flail her little arms around to try to keep her balance. She leans on Sochi, who more often than not has served as Mariko’s personal breaks when she decides to run around the house. Makkachin lifts up his head at the commotion, and then slowly lays back down and resumes his nap. Zuzu immediately scampers from her place near the food bowls to go hide between Yuuri’s legs.

Mariko stops there just at the entrance to the kitchen and looks at both of them, seemingly deliberating which of them is more qualified to help with whatever she needs. After a beat she turns to Victor and says, “Papa, help,” and makes grabby hands at him.

Victor makes sure he doesn’t leave anything important unsaved in his Mac before he closes it, and gets up to walk towards Mariko, taking one of her outstretched hands.

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

“Can you do my hair, please? And help me with my poster?” Mariko asks, already dragging Victor towards her room. Sochi bumps his head against Victor’s free hand and Victor scratches him behind the ears for his troubles.

“What kind of hair do you want?”

“I want cool assassin braids,” she tells him. “And Daddy screwed the glitter jar shut really tight and I can’t open it. I need lots of glitter for my poster.”

“Okay!” Victor says, knowing with absolute certainty that, after they’re done, both him and Mariko will be  _ covered _ in glitter for the foreseeable future.

Mariko drags one of the small child sized chairs that came with her princess tea set table to the middle of the room and puts a pillow in front of it which is currently populated by crayons and gel pens and other stationary with a big piece of construction paper in the middle with WELCOME HOME YURA!!!!!! written on it, uneven and a little sloppy.

Sochi follows her around for all of this, making little grumbling noises and overall making her work more difficult. But Mariko doesn’t seem to mind, patting him on the head or pushing him gently away when she needs to.

“Sit,” she commands, and Victor sits, accepting her hairbrush and her hair scrunchies from her and looping them around his wrist. Mariko then kneels in the pillow in front of him and stays very still while she waits for him to brush her hair and braid it. Assassin braids take a little longer than regular braids, because Victor has to start high up on her scalp instead of just braiding loose hair, but Mariko is very good at sitting and waiting as long as she has something in her hands to entertain herself with.

She colours the letters in the poster as Victor braids, turning her head dutifully when he tells her to. Victor is just about done when Yuuri pokes his head into the room. “Breakfast’s ready,” he announces.

“I need to make my poster pretty with glitter,” Mariko says, waving the jar around.

“You can do that after breakfast,” Yuuri says. “Come on, I know you’re going to need a shower after you’re done. Let’s eat first and then I can help you.”

“But Papa just did my hair! Taking a shower is gonna mess it up.”

“We won’t get your hair wet. Come on Machan, I made blini.”

Mariko trips herself up in her haste to get to the kitchen. “Okay! We can do it later!” she says and skips her way past Yuuri. Sochi gets up and trails after her.

“That worked,” Yuuri says with a small smile. “Do you need help up?” he asks.

“I’m not that old yet,” Victor says, wincing a little when his knees crack as he stands up.

“If you say so,” Yuuri says with that little teasing glint in his eye that has undone Victor countless times.

“Why, Mr. Katsuki, are you teasing me? We have a child waiting. And another to pick from the airport in three hours.”

“Just in time for lunch too. Yura has always had impeccable timing.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t get lost in the airport again. I have no idea how he keeps managing to do it, it’s not like he hasn’t been to that airport  _ countless _ times,” Victor says, kissing Yuuri’s temple as he passes by and guiding him towards the kitchen with a hand on his back. “Otabek might be with him. There’s hope for our son to be delivered to us safe and sound.”

“You think so? He stayed behind to spend time with Otabek, and they should be training for World’s. I don’t think he’ll come this time,” Yuuri says, still with that teasing little glint in his eyes.  

“Want to bet on it?” Victor smirks. He loves betting, because even if he loses, he wins.

“What do you suggest?”

“For something like this? A repeat of breaking in our bedroom.”

“Which time?”

“The floor to ceiling window time.”

That was a very nice time. Victor had to have a very awkward conversation with one of their neighbors in which he pretended he didn’t speak Japanese, but a  _ very _ nice time.

“I accept. I wanna bet our second Tanabata when Yuuko almost caught us.”

Yuuri smirks at him, cheeks a little red. That was also an  _ excellent _ time.

“I accept,” Victor says. They shake on it.

“Dads! I’m gonna eat all your food! Come to the table, I’m lonely.”

Victor and Yuuri exchange a look full of fondness for their little daughter.

“We’re coming!” Victor calls out and they join her for breakfast.

They eat breakfast in easy conversation, and afterwards both Victor  _ and _ Yuuri decide to help Mariko with her poster which means all three of them end up covered in glitter and need to take a shower, which is prolonged when Sochi decides to jump in the tub with Mariko and they then have to spend twenty minutes chasing him down and drying him before he gets all their furniture wet.

Then it’s a matter of getting everyone dressed, making sure the dogs are walked and telling Kenjirou they’re driving to Fukuoka to pick up Yura and should anything happen to call one of them. That conversation goes as well as expected with Yuuri talking and Kenjirou hanging to every single word he says, giving him heart eyes, which Victor finds mildly disturbing since this boy is barely older than Yura and very visibly wants to bang his husband. Not that means a lot since Yura is going on twenty-six now and  _ god _ that makes him feel so  _ old _ .

Victor has a healthy dose of mistrust for Kenjirou since one of the times the kid had been absolutely plastered at one of their parties, he had loudly proclaimed how he was going to be Yuuri’s second husband, and when someone had pointed out that Yuuri was already very happily married  _ thank you very much _ he had looked Victor right in the eye and said, “People die all the time. I can wait.” before he had promptly thrown up on their nice carpet.

Victor still has nightmares about that.

They pile into Yuuri’s kid friendly, nine-seat van because a lot of the kids they teach at the rink need to be driven to and from the rink, and head to Fukuoka.

Mariko sits in her booster seat in the back and kicks her legs, sweet talking them into putting on her playlist with the anime idol girls she likes, which are all about the power of friendship and having fun. Victor knows the lyrics to most of them, and badly sings along with her as Yuuri drives, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the songs.

Singing is a good replacement to movie-watching since Mariko gets carsick looking at screens.

They arrive at the airport a little before Yura’s plane is supposed to land. Victor grabs Mariko’s hands tightly and guides her to the arrivals gate as she bounces at his side.

Thankfully, Yura isn’t flying Aeroloft so his plane gets there in time, and they don’t have to sit around for long until they see Yura through the glass partition making his way down the hall. Well, Mariko sees him first and immediately plasters herself to the glass, pressing her poster up against it with an audible thunk and shouts, “Yura!”

Yura, on the other side, visibly startles, flinching away from the sudden noise, before he realizes what the source is and a smile breaks over his face and he starts speed-walking towards the exit. Victor barely has time to grab Mariko by the back of the jacket before she runs off.

“Hand,” he tells her, giving her his hand to hold. Mariko wraps her fingers around two of Victor’s and starts pulling him forward so they can meet Yura halfway. He only lets her go when they’re only a couple of meters away from Yura and he’s crouching down with his arms open waiting for Mariko to run into them, which she does at such a high speed she almost bowls Yura over.

“Yunii, I missed you,” Mariko says, voice muffled from how she’s hiding her face in Yura’s shoulder.

“I missed you too,” Yura says, getting up with Mariko in his arms, and she easily wraps her legs around his middle so she doesn’t slip. “Don’t cry, Masha. Come on, you promised.”

Victor has half a mind to grab his phone and take a picture but Yuuri beats him to it, probably having recorded the entire reunion. Victor makes a mental note to put it in one of his many hard drives to keep it safe. Little moments like this are always precious to look back at. Yuuri calls Victor’s frankly ridiculous and methodically organized collection of memories electronic scrapbooking.

“’m not crying,” Mariko says, sniffling a little bit.

“I brought you something,” Yura says and that gets an immediate reaction. Mariko pulls back from his shoulder and looks at him with wide eyes.

“What is it?”

Yura might have a terrible sense of direction, but if there’s any sense that has always served him well is his sense of timing, because just as he turns so both him and Mariko can see the exit door, Otabek walks through it, dragging behind him two different suitcases.

“Beka!” Mariko screams, leaning so far out of Yura’s arms she almost overbalances and falls. Yura manages to put a hand on her back and steady her until Otabek is close enough and has his hands free to hold her.

Mariko doesn’t make it fully into Otabek’s arms before she starts crying. It’s not really a novel scenario, Mariko getting so overwhelmed that it just spills over, and Otabek takes it in stride rubbing a hand over her back and hugging her while she hiccups about how much she missed him.

Victor turns to Yuuri for a moment while Yura is too distracted feeling emotional over his little sister and his boyfriend, and whispers, “I win.” taking a second to appreciate the fond exasperated look Yuuri gives him before he goes in to hug his son and asking him how his mini-vacation was, doing the same to Otabek when Mariko has calmed down a little and isn’t trying to strangle Otabek with affection.

The boys are pretty tired from their flight and one look at them tells Victor they wouldn’t be up for any sort of sitting down restaurant that would undoubtedly be filled with people, so he piles everyone and their luggage back in Yuuri’s sensible dad van and they get take-out and eat it in the car, Mariko’s songs playing softly in the background as she sits between Yura and Otabek and excitedly tells them about everything she did since they last saw her.

Victor tries to make sure no one drops anything on the seats and feeds Yuuri as he drives. There’s a little too much noise and Yura spills food on the carpet and every time they pass by any sort of animal it’s a competition to see who can yell its name the loudest, but it’s good. It’s good to have everyone back. In Victor’s experience, a noisy car ride is a good one.

 

 

[three]

World’s has just finished and to celebrate kicking into the off-season, Victor and Yuuri thought it would be a good idea for a little family get-together. This sounds like a very good idea on paper, but in practice they have children screaming everywhere, at least three people having meltdowns, house pets that insist on chasing each other, and not one single moment to breathe.

Getting their families together would be nice if it meant just inviting their parents over, but it does not. It means inviting Yuuri’s parents and sister, and Victor’s moms and their three poodles. And Yuuri’s parents somehow also involve Minako because she has been almost as much of a mother to him as Hiroko as… a wine mom, maybe a vodka aunt if nothing else. It also means the Nishigoris and the triplets and the triplets’ partners and one of the triplets’ triplets.

It also means Otabek and Otabek’s younger sister and his mother – his older sister was too caught up with work to make it. And because Yuuri can’t say no to Kenjirou without feeling like he just kicked a puppy, Kenjirou comes along dragging his little shiba and his two partners with him.

And Victor made the very severe mistake of mentioning they were throwing this little get together in their group chat so Mila invited herself and Sara over since they are currently touring Japan for their year-long third honeymoon or so. Yuuri knows that Victor absolutely regrets that Mila ever met his mothers, because she had immediately declared them her lesbian goddesses and started following their teachings which were mostly about loving your wife, bad excuses for trips and giving oral.

Yuuri is stressed. Victor is stressed but pretending not to be, Yura keeps using Otabek as a social shield and Machan is having the absolute time of her life, having so many people to play with that bring her gifts and coo over her.

“Can I talk to you?” Otabek asks, voice serious.

And adding to the list of things that are stressing them out, Otabek has been trying to talk to them about something important since he arrived but they keep getting interrupted.

Yuuri’s brain has been jumping to the worst case scenario since he started asking, but unfortunately something always happens, like someone breaking something expensive, or spilling alcohol on something expensive. They need less expensive things. There are three dogs, two cats and at least one child running around their house all the time, why do they have  _ so many expensive things _ .

“Sure,” Yuuri says.

“I was hoping to talk with Victor too?” Otabek says, fidgeting. Otabek does not fidget. Yuuri has kill bill sirens going off in his head.

“Of course,” Yuuri says, as calmly as he can.  “Let me ge-“

Something crashes loudly somewhere in their living room and Yuuri winces. He holds a finger up to Otabek and goes over to investigate, only to find the couch overturned and several grown adults standing on the furniture. Mila has jumped up on top of their television stand and their flatscreen TV is wobbling dangerously. Mariko is wrapped around a floor lamp and Victor is on top of their coffee table, holding Sochi up like a baby.

“Yuuri don’t come in here,” Victor tells him.

“What the- why? Get down from there!”

“Daddy, you can’t come in here,” Mariko shouts at him. “The floor is lava!”

Yura and Otabek’s younger sister who are sitting comfortably on top of one of their tall bookcases are grinning maniacally down at the chaos.

Yuuri takes a big step back so he’s out of the living room and not on the lava. “Right. I’m gonna go, and when the floor stops being lava, put my couch back in place.”

Yuuri turns on his heels and almost trips over Zuzu who is looking miserable in her little anxiety sweater.

“Aw, baby,” Yuuri coos and leans down to pet her. “There’s too many people isn’t there?”

Zuzu puts her paws up on Yuuri’s shoulder and tries to climb into his lap, so Yuuri picks her up like the big overgrown anxious baby she is and carries her around. Vicchan didn’t really like to be carried, she was tiny and shaking with energy constantly and all she wanted was to run around. Zuzu is fairly big for a pit-bull and spooks at loud sounds. Yuuri tries not to think too much about what got her in this state before he brought her home, and decides to focus more on giving her a lot of love and dressing her up in little sweaters that help with her anxiety. He can relate. Soft sweaters also make him feel more comfortable.

“Sorry,” he says when he’s back in the kitchen. “Victor is a little held up right now. You could just talk to m-“

“Yuuri,” Minako says animatedly, waving a bottle of wine in her head. “We’re out of wine.”

“That’s your second bottle!”

“Skimpy,” Minako sniffs. “I raised you with my own bare hands and this is how you repay me, huh? I see how it is.”

Yuuri sighs. “I’ll get you another bottle,” Yuuri says, trying to figure out how to get a bottle and not let go of his pup.

Turns out he doesn’t need to because Otabek has always been an excellent boy and goes over to their liquor cabinet to take out and open another bottle of the good wine, handing it over to Minako, who promptly disappears back into their dining room. Yuuri is trying very hard not to think of the absolute mess he’ll walk into if he steps in there. If there’s anything he’s learned is that mixing Victor’s moms, Minako, and alcohol is  _ never _ a good idea.

“Thank you,” he sighs in relief. “I’m gonna put her in our room and make sure she’s settled, if anything catches on fire there’s a fire extinguisher-

“-under the sink, and there’s another in the bathroom. I know,” Otabek nods.

“And-“

“Victor isn’t allowed to drink.”

If this boy doesn’t marry his son, Yuuri is going to give up on this world. “Thank you. If you need anything, just… shout.”

The day continues to be chaotic, barely giving Yuuri a moment to breathe, making sure all their pets are okay, and all his guests are okay, while preparing snacks, desserts and dinner. Victor has graciously let Yuuri escape into the kitchen where the only thing he has to worry about is Nikolai and his mother looking over his shoulder and asking if they can help which is always a disaster because they clash in the kitchen, and Minako pillaging their liquor cabinet. Victor goes in and out, entertaining their guests like the graceful host he is, and making rounds to get them food because well-fed guests are happy guests who don’t start dancing competitions on top of their coffee table. Okay so that might have been Yuuri at their last house party but that would not have happened if he had food on hand, so his point stands.

Every time Victor comes in he looks a little more haggard. Victor loves entertaining and he loves having these many people around, but being responsible for them having a good time also stresses him out a little, especially since there are so many people around, it makes it hard to move.

“Come here,” Yuuri says, when Victor swoops back in to take a couple more entrees to the living room. “Sit,” Yuuri demands, pushing him softly on one of their breakfast stools.

“Yuuri, I have to-“

Yuuri shoves a bacon wrapped sausage in his mouth.

“Eat,” he says. “Yura can set this on the table, I’ve already called him over.”

Yura’s impeccable timing still holds and he walks into the kitchen with Otabek on his heels and Mariko piggybacking on Otabek’s sister.

“We’re here to help!” Mariko announces, sliding down Aisha’s back.

“Can you please set those out in the living room?” Yuuri asks, both of his hands resting on each of Victor’s knees to keep him in place as he chews.

“Sure,” Yura shrugs, “anything that gets me away from the triple terrors. They were trying to exploit me for money again.”

“They con because they love,” Yuuri quotes dutifully.

The kids all grab plates and start bringing them to the table, Mariko focusing intensely on the plate of finger foods she’s carrying so she doesn’t drop it.

“Good?” Yuuri asks, when Victor is done chewing.

“Good.”

Yuuri smiles a little, leans over to kiss him. “Good. Breathe for a bit. Nothing should catch on fire if you’re not running around trying to make sure everyone is okay.”

“Famous last words,” Victor says, but seems to settle a little.

“Otabek has been trying to talk to us the entire day,” Yuuri says.

“I know, he approached me a couple of times.”

“Do you think it’s something bad?” Yuuri says, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“Maybe he’s going to ask our help to propose, or to choose rings,” Victor says, eyes widening in excitement.

Yuuri raises his eyebrows, “That doesn’t sound like Otabek.”

“Let me  _ dream _ , and pretend our son wouldn’t rather elope instead of having a proper wedding if given half a chance.”

“What if it’s something bad?” Yuuri asks. It’s stressing him out. He doesn’t even know what it could be so bad that Otabek would need to talk with them privately for, but still.

Victor kisses his forehead. “I’m sure it’s fine, darling. If it was something bad, Yura wouldn’t be so calm, don’t you think?”

“I guess…”

Victor takes his hands and squeezes them. “Don’t worry so much. All our kids grew up well, even if it’s bad we’ll handle it.”

“I know,” he says, breathing out slowly.

“But I’m sure it’s good news!”

“I don’t know… he just looks really serious.”

Victor brings one of Yuuri’s hands up to his lips and kisses his palm.

“Have more faith in my judgment, sweetheart. In  _ fact _ , I’ll bet you that it’s good news.”

Yuuri perks up a little. “A bet?”

“First night when we got someone to babysit Yura in St. Petersburg.”

“Sappy,” Yuuri says. “And if you lose?”

“Whatever you want. Think on it.”

Yuuri turns his hands in Victor’s and shakes it. “Deal.”

“Deal,” Victor says, beaming.

Someone screams from one of the rooms followed by something crashing and breaking. Victor closes his eyes. “Give me strength to get everyone safely through this day,” Victor prays.

Yuuri kisses him again. “There. Strength. Start getting people into the dining room, maybe everyone will calm down a little.”

“Thank you,” Victor says, giving him a dopey smile before leaving to fix whatever is wrong now.

Surprisingly they make it to the end of the day without anything catching on fire or anyone injuring themselves, which shouldn’t be things they should feasibly be worried about, but that’s usually what happens when you get a group of people together that don’t handle alcohol well.

Victor and Yuuri both made a pact not to even touch anything remotely alcoholic. They’re both about ready to collapse by the time most of everyone is out of their door.

And so is Mariko even if she’s fighting fiercely against sleep, slumped over Victor’s shoulder as they say goodbye to people at the door. The perks of having parents who own a inn is that they can find a place for everyone to stay without having to stress about it too much, and they certainly don’t have to worry about anyone crashing on their couch.

“Drive safely,” Yuuri tells Mari at the door, standing by Victor.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get everyone home just fine,” Mari assures him.

“Do you need me to drive someone?” he asks, looking over her shoulder at where most of their parents are completely plastered and being loud outside of their apartment. Thank  _ god _ they own the building and don’t have to worry about noise complaints.

“It’s fine. I brought the inn’s van, everyone should fit in fine.”

Yuuri tries not to worry too much. “Okay, goodnight Mari.”

“Night. Thanks for the food,” she says. “But next time you’re going to drive all of us home. I can’t believe I lost a chance to do shots with Mila.”

Yuuri is very glad she missed that chance because the last time it happened they had gotten into an arm wrestling contest that had lasted for thirty minutes and only ended when Sara distracted Mila into losing, prompting Mari to crush a beer can in her hand and drunkenly yell “Love makes you weak!”

Their collective family should just be outlawed from drinking. Possibly forever.

“I’m gonna take this bitch home,” Yura says, hauling Minami down the hall.

“Why is he crying?” Yuuri asks, unsure if he wants to know the answer to that or not.

“I thought he had left earlier,” Victor says.

“I found him in the tub watching dad’s old performances and crying,” Yura shrugs.

Yuuri would really like to say that this is something novel for them but it really, really isn’t. They have found Minami drunk and re-watching old Youtube videos of Yuuri in a frankly ridiculous number of places. Yuuri tries not to think about it too much.

“Get him in bed, don’t just drop him on the floor in the middle of his living room like last time, Yura,” Yuuri tells him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Yura grumbles, and hauls a very drunk and sniffling Minami out of their house.

Yuuri closes the door behind them carefully.

“Well,” Victor says, swaying a little in place to try to lull Mariko to sleep. “That was fun!”

Yuuri thinks about all the dishes they’re going to have to wash tomorrow and all the cleaning they’ll have to do. And then he thinks how nice it is to sit around a table with people he knows celebrating Yura and Otabek’s World’s wins, and taking the time to catch up with each other.

He smiles a little. “Yeah, it was.”

“Let’s not do that again for the next four months,” Victor adds, tone just as cheerful.

“Yes, please,” Yuuri sighs, relieved.

Victor gives him a smile that is as amused as it is tired.

“Bed time?” Yuuri asks, nudging Victor gently towards Mariko’s room so they can put her to bed. It’s easy with two of them, even if Mariko is heavy and asleep in Victor’s arms. Yuuri helps take her shoes off and undoes her intricate hair-do, before he gets her into her pajamas, Victor shushing her gently when she stirs, which doesn’t really happen often. Mariko is a heavy sleeper.

They tuck her in with her favorite stuffie – a cute bear with a little bow around the neck, soft and worn in, and that was bigger than her when she was born. Otabek had told them she would grow into it and she did.

They kiss her on the forehead, make sure her nightlight is plugged in and there’s nothing on the floor that could hurt her feet if she wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to go into their room.

“I’m going to sleep for thirty hours,” Yuuri sighs, ready to faceplant on his bed and not get up again until he’s dragged out.

“Not yet, sweetheart. I’m afraid we still have something to deal with,” Victor says, pushing Yuuri gently towards the kitchen. Yuuri is vaguely confused about what it could be until he hears water running and dinnerware clinking together and remembers that Otabek is still around. Right. Possible terrible news.

“Otabek, you don’t need to do that,” Victor says sitting himself and Yuuri at the breakfast counter.

Otabek shuts off the water and wipes his hands clean. “I don’t mind helping,” Otabek says. “I’m sorry for keeping you up, I’m going back to Kazakhstan with my sister and mom tomorrow morning and I wanted to have this conversation face to face.”

Victor waves his hand in a little dismissive gesture. “It’s okay, it’s okay. What do you need to talk to us about?”

Otabek pulls a neat file out of the inside of his coat and puts it on the counter in front of them. Yuuri can’t believe he’s been carrying that around the whole night. He’s also afraid of what could be in there, because a lot of times folders like that can hold not so pleasant to look at medical results.

Victor exchanges a look with him and wordlessly pulls the file over to him and opens it. They both let their eyes run through the words, and almost in sync look back up at Otabek in confusion.

“This is your curriculum?” Yuuri asks.

Otabek nods, and keeps staring at them.

“Otabek,” Victor starts, “We’ve known you since you were child. We know everything you’ve ever done in your  _ life _ . Why are you showing us your curriculum when we could be sleeping? Don’t get me wrong, we are very proud of your accomplishments, but also  _ why _ ?”

“I’m retiring,” Otabek says, slowly, like he’s trying to get used to how that fits in his mouth.

“Oh,” Yuuri says, not sure if he’s surprised or not.

“Congratulations,” Victor says. “Finishing out on a bang is very hard, you’re retiring with two golds and a silver. Very impressive.”

Otabek’s lips twitch. “Thank you.”

“You could’ve said something earlier. We would’ve made it a double celebration!” Victor says.

Yuuri makes a face at the prospect of even  _ more _ people flooding his house. Otabek mirrors it in a more contained way. “That’s okay. It’s not a big deal.”

“Of course it’s a big d-“

“Vitya,” Yuuri says, wanting to get this done with. “Let Beka finish.”

Victor clicks his mouth shut and gives up on his little tirade. “What’s the curriculum for then?” he asks.

“I’d like to move here, and work for you, if that’s okay,” he says, sounding oddly nervous.

Yuuri looks over at Victor and raises an eyebrow almost amused. Victor smirks, definitely amused, and they exchange a little quiet conversation between them.

“You say that as if we haven’t been saving you a place ever since you told us you wanted to be a physiotherapist,” Victor says, closing the file and pushing it back towards Otabek. “So, when are you moving in?” he asks, excitedly.

“Shouldn’t you revise my curriculum?” Otabek asks, eyebrow raised.

“You say that as if we didn’t help you study for some of your exams,” Yuuri points out.

“You say that as if we didn’t know what grades you’ve had since middle school,” Victor continues.

“You say that as if we weren’t at your graduation,” Yuuri says.

“You say that-“

“ _ Okay _ ,” Otabek interrupts. “Still, it would make me more comfortable if you would look it over,” he says and pushes the curriculum back towards them.

Yuuri and Victor exchange another look and then shrug.

“If it would make you more comfortable,” Yuuri says, pulling the curriculum closer. “Can we go to sleep now?”

“Of course,” Otabek says. “I’m sorry for keeping you.”

“Don’t work yourself up so much for something like this next time, okay?” Victor says amicably.

“And don’t worry, we won’t go easy on you just because we’re family.”

“Yuuri’s right,” Victor says. “We know you’ll do great work.”

“Thank you,” Otabek says, a little more softly, a little more earnestly. “I’ll let you go to bed now, thank you for listening to me.”

“Don’t mention it,” Victor says easily.

They lead Otabek to the door and give him a goodbye hug since they’ll probably miss him leaving in the morning. When the door is finally closed behind him, they sigh in relief.

“See, I told you it was going to be alright,” Victor says, kissing his temple and locking their fingers together before he starts dragging Yuuri towards their room.

“You were right,” he says. And then sighs a little. “All our kids are growing up, we’re getting old.”

“We don’t speak like that in this house,” Victor says haughtily.

“Yura is going to retire one day. Machan will start officially competing. We’re  _ old _ , Vity-hmph.” He gets interrupted by Victor tackling him down to the bed.

“We’re not  _ old _ . And Yura isn’t going to retire until he’s thirty-one, you know he’ trying to beat you for most years actively competing. Machan is still a  _ baby _ .”

“She’s eight.”

“A  _ baby _ , Yuuri. We’re not old, we just had children very young. There’s a difference.”

“Fine. We’re not old.”

“If I wasn’t dying right now I would show you how very much not old we are,” Victor says

Yuuri stretches and his back pops uncomfortably. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Definitely tomorrow. I won the bet after all,” Victor mumbles, voice getting a little more sleepy.

“Don’t fall asleep before putting on your pajamas. You’re going to complain about your clothes having creases tomorrow.”

Victor groans. “ _ Yuuri _ , I’m tired.”

Yuuri lifts himself up and pulls Victor by the wrists. “Come on, I’ll help.”

Victor makes himself heavy, and Yuuri huffs a little, grabs him by the front of his shirt and hauls him up.

“ _ Wow _ ,” Victor says in that breathy little tone he has. “So strong.”

“Absolutely not,” Yuuri cuts him short, grabbing their pajamas from the drawer and throwing Victor’s in his face. “It’s bedtime.”

“ _ Mean _ ,” Victor says, looking more amused and fond than anything.

“The worst.” He agrees, putting on his pajamas and laying down on their bed.

He lets himself relax as he hears Victor moving around to wipe his makeup off, and has almost let himself be lulled to sleep when a sudden thought bolts him wide awake.

“Where are our furry children?” he asks, rising up on his elbows.

“Makka and Sochi are in Machan’s room. I don’t know where the big baby is. Probably under our bed.”

Yuuri leans over the edge and peeks down, and Zuzu is in fact laying down there, she opens her eyes and looks at him soulfully.

“Do you want to come up?” Yuuri asks, letting his arm drop down so he can try to pet her.

Zuzu crawls from under the bed, bumping her big head on Yuuri’s hand before she jumps up and lays down in her usual spot. Yuuri makes sure to give her some pets because she is an excellent girl.

Victor gets on the bed beside him and rolls closer to him so he can throw an arm around Yuuri and cuddle him like the needy octopus he is. It makes it easy for Yuuri to fall asleep, with his husband sleeping next to him and one of his puppies curled up at the foot of his bed, a comforting presence.

It makes it a little harder to wake up, though, when he has the combined weight of two big dogs laying on his legs and an eight year old pressing down on his chest. Yuuri doesn’t understand why all his kids try to compress his chest to wake him up, but he can’t really find it in himself to complain when Mariko smiles excitedly down at him and says, “Papa and I made you breakfast! I helped a lot, come eat.”

So he gets up, and he goes to have breakfast.

 

 

[four]

Victor is worried.

Machan is upset about something and he’s worried sick, because she won’t talk to them. They tried so hard to make sure she knew she could come to them with anything, that she wouldn’t try to handle anything on her own that she didn’t need to. They tried so hard to make sure she knew she has a support system in them. And for the most part, they think she knows. When she has a problem with anything she comes to them, she cries to them and they help her work through her emotions and do their best to help her figure out a solution to whatever is bothering her.

Victor doesn’t worry so much when Machan is loudly upset, because he knows that they can work it out. But when she’s like this, quiet and withdrawn and looking so sad… he doesn’t know what to do.

The only thing that helps him is knowing that even if she doesn’t talk to them, she has Yura, and as long as she’s going to Yura with whatever is upsetting her, it will be fine. Even if he feels a little upset that she couldn’t trust them with it. But… she’s growing up, she’ll be in her teens soon. Victor supposes there will be things she won’t want to talk to them about.

He won’t mind as long as she talks to  _ someone _ .

“Where’s Masha?” he asks, coming in from walking the dogs - well, from walking Makka and Zuzu, who are calm enough to be walked together. Sochi is too rambunctious for Victor to walk him at the same time as the other two.

“Yura’s,” Yuuri says, lips downturned in worry.

“Again?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought we’d have a little more time before the teen angst hit,” Victor tries for a light tone. It falls a little flat.

Yuuri just hums absentmindedly, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Victor can see the worry on his face even with Yuuri moving around to fill the doggy bowls up with water.

“I asked Yura if anything was wrong. He told me not to worry too much about it, that she would come to us when she was ready.”

“So something  _ is _ wrong,” he says, not really being able to avoid how his voice comes out a little defeated.

“Do you think we did something wrong?” Yuuri asks, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Victor would normally say no, immediately and without much thought, but now he can’t really bring himself to.

So instead he goes to Yuuri and runs his hands down his arms, holding him. “I’m sure it’s okay. If Yura says it’s going to be fine then it’s going to be fine.”

“And if it’s not?”

“We’ll fix it. We always figure something out,” Victor says, feeling the words lodging in the back of his throat. He kisses Yuuri’s forehead, and feels him relax the smallest bit.

“Yeah, hopefully,” Yuuri sighs, leaning his forehead on Victor’s shoulder. “She’s never been like this before.”

“At least we don’t have to worry she’ll steal one of our credit cards and fly herself to Kazakhstan,” Victor says, half a joke and half reassurance. Yura’s teenage years had been… rough. But they all had made it through in one piece. Mariko was an easier child than Yura had been, challenging in different ways, and the learning curve of what worked and what didn’t with her was ever changing, but they had  _ thought _ they were doing a relatively good job. But then again don’t all parents, even the ones who fuck up?

“Don’t even joke about that. The last thing I need is a call from the Leroys telling me my daughter just flew to Canada to hang out with their kids because she is angsting.”

“Machan doesn’t  _ angst _ .”

Machan cries out her emotions when she needs to and  _ clings _ until she feels better.

“Machan angsts. We’re just so used to grand scale angsting that we don’t even register it as real angsting.”

“That’s… fair,” Victor concedes, pressing his lips together.

His phone going off in his pocket, startling them out of the tense contemplative silence they had fallen into. Victor quickly reaches for it and checks the message.

“Yura is telling us to come over,” Victor relays to Yuuri. “He says it’s important.” He can feel how his frown is pinching the space between his eyebrows.

“What do you think it is?” Yuuri asks, biting the inside of his cheek and chewing on it.

Victor pinches his cheek to get him to stop, before he chews his cheek raw. “Maybe it’s good news,” he says tone trying for cheerful. “It’s been six years, maybe one of them finally decided to put a ring on it.”

Yuuri lifts his eyebrows. “It’s probably another intervention,” he says.

Victor snorts. Through the years Yura has sat them down through many interventions, most of which boiled down to either  _ please stop embarrassing me in public  _ or  _ this year’s choreographies suck and if you think I’m going to skate to some classical bullshit again I’ll scream.  _ He’s outgrown them a bit as the years passed, but every now and again he still sits them down to have a conversation and calls them interventions.

“Want to bet on it?” Victor asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Is it really fair to bet when I know you’re going to lose?”

“Are you so sure I am?” Victor raises an eyebrow, a little defiant. They both know Yura and Otabek are waiting until Yura retires to get married. It’s not like they’re not obvious about it, and Victor knows that he will lose this bet, but losing to Yuuri is always fun and he’ll do anything right now to add a little levity to both the situation.

“Fine,” Yuuri yields. “I bet Mila’s bachelorette party.”

Victor almost chokes. Yuuri smirks, tilts his head in that little way he has of doing that is as much acting coy as it is placing a challenge on the table.

“Fine,” Victor says. “I bet  _ Christophe’s _ bachelor party.”

Yuuri’s eyes go wide for a second. Christophe’s bachelor party was wild in more ways than one, and the type of experience you look back fondly on but also the type of experience you never want to repeat again in your life. Victor was hungover for what felt like a week straight.

“Deal,” Yuuri says, because he never backs down and he doesn’t like being one-upped. They shake on it, and Victor takes advantage of holding Yuuri’s hand to pull him back from the counter and lead him out of their apartment and towards Yura’s.

Yura lives a couple floors down from them with Otabek, Otabek’s turtle aquarium and Yura’s two cats. It takes them less than a minute to get there.

Yura opens the door for them before they even have a chance to knock.

“Took you long enough,” he complains, letting them slip through the door and trying to keep the cats from running out of the apartment.

“Sorry, we were a little busy,” Victor says lightly.

“Gross,” Yura says, pulling a face and ushering them towards the couch, all but pushing them down on it.

“You know busy isn’t always a metaphor for sex, Yura,” Victor tells him.

Yura pulls another face. “Your words mean nothing to me, when you’ve used it as a metaphor for as long as I’ve been alive,” he tells him, which…  _ fair _ .

“Touché,” he says, grinning, and then dropping it when he sees how serious Yura looks.

“What’s wrong?”

Yura blows the hair from his eyes, looking restless, nervous.

“Listen. Masha has something to tell you. She’s been really nervous about this, even though I keep telling her she doesn’t need to be. So, just… hear her out.”

Victor can feel the tension seeping into his bones, constricting around his heart.

“Is she okay?” Yuuri asks.

“She’ll be fine,” Yura says with absolute certainty and it eases Victor’s worry a little bit. If Yura says it’s going to be fine, then it’s going to be fine. He might be worried but he trusts him. “This family has bad genes, everyone’s emotionally stupid,” he tells them. Which is… also fair, in a way, even if they have worked on it for years, sometimes they can still be a little dumb.

Fortunately both him and Yuuri learned the importance of communication very fast in their relationship, so even if one of them is being emotionally dumb, they can always figure it out.

“We’ll listen carefully,” Yuuri says.

Yura nods at that, and goes further into the house, possibly to get Machan, leaving Victor and Yuuri sitting there on the couch to stew in his foreboding words.

Victor puts an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders and rubs the back of his knuckles against his upper arm, a gesture made to comfort Yuuri as much as it comforts and settles himself. Waiting is always the worst part of anything. Victor hates waiting for things to happen.

Luckily, it doesn’t take long for Yura to walk back into the room followed by Machan, who looks nervous and determined and so incredibly like Yuuri that Victor immediately feels a swell of fondness.

She’s clutching coloured flashcards in her hands tightly, making the paper crinkle. Victor also notices how her hair is made up in one of Yura’s trademark braids, the one Yura would have Victor or Yuuri do when he was feeling a little too restless and needed something to settle him.

“She’s wearing her serious clothes,” Yuuri whispers to him.

Victor had noticed that too. Whenever Machan has to do anything remotely official, she picks outfits that make her look as much like Victor’s mamochka as she can. She looks very cute in her little dress shirt and pants, clutching her flashcards.

She stands in front of Yura and Otabek’s projection screen and looks over at Yura, who settles in an armchair nearby with a laptop balanced in his lap, and then at something over Victor and Yuuri’s hands.

Victor and Yuuri turn back in sync, and look over the back of the couch to see what she’s looking at, and their eyes run into Otabek, fiddling with the projector. Otabek looks over and gives Mariko a gentle smile and an encouraging thumbs up. Victor turns just in time to see her return the gesture.

Victor could feel upset that Machan didn’t come to them directly – and to a degree, he does, a little – but mostly he’s just really happy and relieved that she has other people she can go to, other people she trusts and that can help her work through everything that’s upsetting her.

The projector comes to life and several images appear next to Machan, all of them of Victor or Yuuri or Yura or Otabek at some sort of podium, smiling, victorious, with gold around their neck.

Machan trembles finely, standing there in front of them. She looks over at Yura, looking lost and Victor almost wants to get up and scoop her up and hug her until she knows she doesn’t have anything to worry about. But he promised to listen, and he doesn’t want to make her upset by interrupting her. So he sits there, and lets Yura’s mouthed “You can do this” settle Mariko.

“Good morning,” she says, very formally.

“Hi, baby,” Victor says, waving his fingers.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Yuuri says, giving her a reassuring smile.

It works somewhat, and Machan seems a little more relaxed.

She clears her throat and looks down at her flashcards.

“Figure skating started its Golden Age when Victor Nikiforov revolutionized what being a skater meant, not only in artis- arts- artistry but also with jumpstarting the quad race. To this day he’s still one of the people with most medals,” she looks up at Victor and he smiles reassuringly, nods at her. “His five year golden streak has yet to be broken.”

Yura grumbles a little bit. Victor knows how annoying it is for him that he hasn’t managed to surpass Victor in this one thing when he did it in everything else.

“And after he retired he started coaching Katsuki Yuuri, who is also one of the skaters with the most medals and one of the skaters who has competed for the longest time in recorded history.”

Victor hugs Yuuri to his side, feeling overwhelmingly proud of him.

“They both started the Golden Age because they won so much and surprised everyone and they both landed new jumps, but they also were part of making sure the next generation of skaters were really good and that the sport kept going, starting with their son Yuri Plisetsky, who currently holds all the scoring records, and has broken more records out of everyone, ever.”

Mariko looks over at Yura and gives him a little nod. The image being projected changes to one of their family tree. Victor and Yuuri in the center connected by a line and a pair of rings with the number of medals they won besides them. Yura and Mariko underneath them, Yura connected to Otabek with a little heart, also with their won medals besides them.

“They’re one of the biggest skating families, and- and they did a lot of really amazing things,” her voice gets a little wobbly and Victor and Yuuri exchange a quick look both of them frowning. “And everyone is waiting to see what they’ll do next, and- and-“ she tapers off.

“You’re doing really well, sweetheart,” Victor tries.

“It’s a very nice presentation, we’re really proud of you,” Yuuri supports, trying to give her a little more courage, which seems to have the direct opposite reaction and Machan immediately starts crying.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, and Victor feels it like a knife in the gut.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” he asks, unconsciously extending an arm out towards her as Yuuri does the same.

Mariko stumbles her way into the couch and falls between the two of them, who immediately try to comfort her as best as they can, wiping tears off her face, and pushing the hair out of her eyes, rubbing her back gently.

“What’s wrong?” Yuuri repeats.

“I’m sorry, I don’t wanna make you sad, I’m sorry,” she continues, trying to hide her face in Yuuri’s arm.

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing you can that could make us sad,” Victor reassures. “Please don’t cry, darling.”

“B-but you’re gonna be  _ disappointed _ ,” she says, face blotchy red and her entire frame shaking.

“We could  _ never _ ,” Victor tells her so vehemently that she has to believe in him.

“Papa is right, you can’t do anything to disappoint us, we are  _ so _ proud of you,” Yuuri says, and uses the bottom of his shirt to wipe Mariko’s nose.

“E-even if I don’t wanna skate?”

“Of course,” Victor says immediately, promptly. It’s not something that needs thought, really.

“Of  _ course _ ,” Yuuri says. “Papa and I are sorry if we made you feel like you had to skate to make us proud.”

“You don’t,” Victor continues. “You can do anything you want and we’ll be really proud of you no matter what.”

“But,” Mariko starts, not crying as hard, “but everyone says I’m going to be great like you and like Yura and like Beka.”

Victor feels absolutely  _ crushed _ that his baby was worrying so much and they didn’t even notice, that maybe they have been forcing her into skating all this time without even realizing.

“Everyone doesn’t matter. What matters is what makes you happy, Machan,” Victor tells her, thumbing away the tears caught in the corners of her eyes. “All the important people just want you to be happy and do what you like. If skating doesn’t make you happy, you don’t need to do it.”

Mariko sniffles and clumsily tries to wipe her face. “Really?”

“Really really,” Yuuri answers. “You don’t have to skate ever again if you don’t like it.”

Her bottom lip starts wobbling. “You’re not upset?”

“Of course not,” Yuuri says at the same time as Victor says, “ _ Never _ .”

She starts crying again. “I was really scared you’d be sad with me,” she hiccups, trying to clutch both of them close. Victor and Yuuri shift to allow her to do it, making a little safe and comfortable space between them where she fits perfectly.

“We’ll never be sad with you because you don’t want to do something,” Yuuri says, voice also sounding a little rough.

“Dad is right, we love you very much and we want you to be happy.”

Potya jumps up on the couch and worms her way under Victor’s arm, carefully stepping over him until she can lay down on Mariko’s lap and start purring like an engine. Mariko pets her gently, and they stay like that for a while, waiting for Mariko to calm down, and reassuring her softly that they’re not mad and that they will support her in everything that she chooses to do and to be.

“Skating is really fun,” she whispers quietly when all her tears are gone and the bottom of Yuuri’s shirt is stained with her snot. Yura and Otabek have left the room a little while ago to give them a bit of privacy to work things out. “I love skating with you and Yura and Beka. But I don’t wanna compete and win medals.”

Victor kisses her forehead. “That’s alright, sweetheart.”

“You don’t have to compete, it’s okay,” Yuuri says. “And it’s okay not to know what you want to do too. You don’t need to know right now.”

Mariko starts chewing on the inside of her cheek, looking a little shy. “I wanna dance,” she says quietly. “Like the idols on TV.”

Victor looks over at Yuuri, and they suddenly understand.

Mariko  _ loves _ idols. She’s been coming to one of them with choreographies for songs she sees in music programs and begs that they teach her, and Victor knows that lately she’s been trying to learn alone, using her hairbrush like a microphone and bouncing around in her room.

The first time they had gotten her tickets to go watch a girl group from some anime when she was little, she cried for twenty whole minutes because she was so overwhelmingly happy. When they got there, she knew every single song and dance by memory.

Kids go through phases, like every person does, and she might outgrow this but-

“Would you like being an idol, Machan?” Victor asks.

Her eyes go wide, like the thought never occurred to her. Victor figures if she thought she  _ had _ to be a skater because of them she probably wouldn’t think about anything else. His poor baby, so upset for all this time, and thinking they would force her into anything.

“I can do something like that?” she asks, voice so full of hope, and Victor feels it clench around his chest.

“You can do anything you want,” Yuuri says. “We can find someone to teach you singing, if you want.”

“Really?”

“Really really,” Victor says.

She puts an arm around each of their necks and tries to hug them. “Thank you, thank you thank you. I’ll try really hard!”

“We know you will,” Yuuri says. “And if you ever want to stop, promise you’ll tell us right away.”

Machan pulls back and nods frantically. “I will, I will. I promise.”

Yuuri holds up his pinky finger. Victor does the same. Machan hooks one pinky around Yuuri’s and the other around Victor’s.

“Pinky promise, if I lie, I’ll swallow 1000 needles,” she sings, shaking their hands up and down by their intertwined fingers. Yuuri sings with her very seriously.

“Good,” Yuuri says with a small smile. “We can talk more about this after lunch, go ask Yura if he wants to come with us.”

“We’re are you going?”

“Yutopia,” Yuuri says, and he’s not even finished saying the word before Mariko bolts out of the couch and runs into the house looking for Yura, throwing a careless “okay” over her shoulder.

There’s nothing better after breakdowns than some of Hiroko’s delicious home cooked meals and the comfortable and soothing ambient of the inn.

“Are we bad parents for not noticing this sooner?” Yuuri asks quietly.

Victor also feels bad about that, but if he spirals, Yuuri spirals. “I think…” he starts, slowly, “that we’ll always make mistakes and how we handle them is what defines if we’re good parents or not.”

Yuuri chews over that one for a couple of seconds before he nods. “I’ll take that. Machan isn’t upset anymore, and that’s what’s important,” he says.

“Definitely. And now that we know, we can be better about it.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says, breathing out slow and measure as if to re-center himself. “Besides, that definitely counted as an intervention. I win.”

“ _ Yuuri _ !”

 

 

[five]

“Do you really think they’ll do it today?” Yuuri asks dubiously.

“It’s Yura’s last season. I don’t think they’ll wait for Yura to even get off the ice before one of them puts a ring on it.”

Yuuri hums, considering. He always thought they wouldn’t rush into it because Yura and Otabek don’t rush into anything, but he could be wrong. They’ve been dating for so long, almost ten years. Some people enjoy a long dating period before jumping into a marriage with one kid. Or so Yuuri has heard. He’s not really familiar with the concept.

“Wanna bet on it?” Yuuri asks, raising an eyebrow.

Victor looks over at him with interest, eyes lighting up and lips curling in a little teasing smile.

“I bet the infinity pool during our first honeymoon that before the event is over they’re engaged,” he offers.

“Is there even an infinity pool here?”

“Yup,” Victor says, popping the p happily. “And Machan is probably going to want to spend her time with the Leroy kids.”

Yuuri grins. “Well, we should let her hang out with her friends. It’s only right.”

“We should,” Victor hums, pushing the button to call the elevator. “So, what’s your bet?”

Yuuri taps his finger to his lips, mock-thoughtfully. “Barcelona, after the Grand Prix,” he decides on. “I bet they’ll wait until the event is done, they’ve probably been planning this forever.”

“First time in Barcelona or second time?” Victor asks.

“Second, of course.”

They shake on it.

The elevator dings open and Yuuri pulls Victor into it by the hand he was grasping, backing himself up against the wall and pulling Victor close. He’s about to tip his head up for a kiss before someone slams their hand in between the closing elevator doors and triggers them to open again.

Victor steps back with a slight pout, and they both turn towards the elevator door to see JJ standing there, beaming, because  _ of course _ .

“I thought it was you!”

“Good morning, JJ,” Yuuri says politely.

JJ steps in and presses the button for the bottom floor. “Good morning!” he says, just a little too loudly. JJ always speaks just a little above the acceptable conversational volume. Yuuri thinks that after years of running into him during competitions he’d get used to it, but that has yet to happen.

“I thought you were with Isabella and the kids,” Yuuri says, barely tilting the last words into a question.

JJ holds up two sparkly backpacks. “They forgot these in the room, I went back for them. Are you having breakfast right now?”

“We were going to meet Yura and Otabek for breakfast, yes,” Victor says, pleasantly.

“Great! We can all eat together! Izzy was getting the girls out of the pool.”

“You took them to the pool? Mariko didn’t pack a swimsuit, did she?” Yuuri frowns a little, looking over at Victor.

Victor shrugs. “She said she’d pack herself, she might have gotten one in there without us checking.”

“Izzy and I bought her one from the hotel store, don’t worry!” JJ says.

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “That’s nice, you didn’t need to do that.”

“We can pay you back for it,” Victor offers.

JJ flaps a hand at them. “Don’t worry. The girls were looking forward to the pool. We couldn’t make Marie sit it out! That’s not JJ style at all,” he says, and to this day Yuuri has no idea if he still says that as a joke or if he still things that little JJ thing is cool.

Yuuri will never pretend to understand what these kids are into.

The elevator reaches the bottom floor and JJ leads them towards the hotel’s restaurant, carrying a conversation by himself with minimal input from Yuuri or Victor. He’s mellowed some with age, much like Yura had. Their rivalry had turned into a sort of unwilling begrudging friendship cemented on competitiveness. JJ is a good kid – aside maybe from repeatedly saying Mariko’s name wrong. He’s always been a good kid, even though his ridiculous JJ style phase, but it’s nice to see him as an adult, happily married and living his best life.

He guesses it was lucky that World’s ended up being in Canada this year, and lucky that JJ had been invited to commentate for it. His two daughters are more or less Mariko’s age, younger by maybe a year or two, Yuuri can never remember, even if, at the time, it was a bit of a big deal. JJ having gotten his wife pregnant within a year of marriage and how the whole internet was excited for their babies, until Victor and Yuuri more or less accidentally upstaged them by revealing that their year-long semi-hiatus away from the media was because they had a new baby girl.

Yura is already at the table with Otabek and Isabelle, the kids having cleaned their plates and having cleared a little space to play in the restaurant. The place is empty enough that Yuuri doesn’t worry that they’ll be bothering any patrons.

Mariko runs to them when she sees them to give them their morning hugs, getting their clothes a little damp when she does it, since her hair hasn’t dried yet from the pool and she still seems to be wearing her swimsuit top under her shirt. She’s going to need a shower before they head off to the arena for the Free Skate later.

It’s an overall nice breakfast, Yura only offers to physically fight JJ three times which should be some sort of record. They talk amicably, and Mariko teaches the twins one of her favourite dance routines from the little idol group she had started at school.

They leave back to their room with Mariko in toe, pouting about having to leave her friends, but willing to go without too much of a fuss since she has a whole outfit prepared and knows for a fact that no one can do her hair as well as Victor can. It’s an important day, after all, they’re all going to dress accordingly and matching-ly.

Yura has finally decided to throw in the towel and is retiring this year, collecting a string of golds through the season and working harder than God to make sure he goes out with a bang even as his knees protest. He’s not as young as he used to be. None of them are, and skating past thirty can be a trial.

He’s broken every record there was to be broken, out-skated most of his generation, including JJ, outskated Yuuri himself. He’s as close to satisfied as he’ll ever be. He spent his whole career trying to surpass both Yuuri and Victor to make sure everyone knew that he was his own person and not the  _ next  _ anything. He made more than sure to separate himself from them. He didn’t skate to be the  _ next _ Nikiforov, or the  _ next _ Katsuki. He skated to be the first Plisetsky, a household name and a living legend in his own right. And he did it. Yuuri barely has words to describe how incredibly proud of him he is for all that he’s accomplished.

And how prouder still he is that Yura knew when to stop. It’s hard, for skaters, to know when it’s time to step down. It was hard for Yuuri and Victor and Otabek.

It’s undoubtedly going to be hard for Yura, but Yuuri knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’ll be okay, even if he still has no idea what he wants to do after skating, he’ll be okay.

“Do you think he’ll do it?” Victor asks around the hair-clips he’s holding with his teeth as he does Mariko’s hair.

Yuuri considers.

“He might not want to risk it,” he says. “If JJ weren’t the one commentating and if we weren’t all here. As it is…”

Victor takes a pin out of his mouth and gently pushes it into Mariko’s hair to hold the intricate braid he’s been working on for at least twenty minutes now.

“That’s what I thought,” he says. “I guess we’ll see.”

_ I guess we’ll see _ , is one of the most stressful sentences, because it implies waiting, and Yuuri is not good with waiting for things that could possibly go very, very badly. Waiting is what gives anxiety a chance to rise up, wrap a hand around his throat and choke him.

It’s barely kept at bay through them getting dressed and meeting at the sport’s center where the competition is being held. Through helping Yura with his make-up and sending Otabek and Mariko to go wait in the VIP bleachers since a party of four for one skater is a little too much. Victor keeps a hand on the small of Yuuri’s back and Yuuri focus his stress into productive and manageable tasks and he’s fine, until they’re rinkside and Yura is about to go up.

“Any last minute advice?” Yura asks with a certain tenseness to his shoulders.

“Watch your transition after the salchow,” Victor tells him. “You get sloppy on that part sometimes. Other than that, you know what you have to do and I know you can do it.”

Yura nods and turns to Yuuri.

“Don’t fall,” Yuuri says, and Yura huffs out a laugh, shoulders loosening up. Yuuri’s lips twitch. “You’ll be fine. Show them how it’s done, one last time,” Yuuri says and brings up his fist.

“Don’t make me cry before I even skate,” Yura says, and gently bumps his fist against Yuuri’s, one last time.

“We’re proud of you, no matter what you do here today,” Victor tells him. “We’re proud of you.”

“I know,” Yura says, raw and honest. “Thank you.  _ Thank you _ .”

Yuuri feels a little choked up. It feels a little like the end of something, how Yura says it.

“Skating next, for the last time, Yuri Plisetsky, from Russia,” the announcer says.

“You’re not allowed to cry until I’m done,” Yura says, pointing at them threateningly, before he skates off to the center of the ice.

The audience goes quiet, and just before Yura’s free music start, Mariko’s voice echoes through the arena shouting, “Yura! Davai!”

Yuuri holds his breath and Victor holds Yuuri’s hand, squeezing as they wait in suspense. Yura’s last program is all about endings and chasing success. It starts fast and dizzying and it slows down to a crawl, the last note hanging in the air until it fades into nothing. It’s the first part that Yuuri and Victor are holding their breaths for because for Yuri, it’s not enough to just finish his last season with a string of golds on his neck, no he has to surprise, he has to carve his name down on the ice so deeply that everyone who skates before him feels it under their blades.

Yuuri knows exactly which part of the program Yura is risking it all on, and he can’t breathe until it passes. Victor squeezes his hand painfully tight and they both lean forward, waiting, praying that this doesn’t go horribly.

Yura launches himself into the air, spins one two three four five… and lands beautiful. The arena predictably loses it, screaming for him and screaming because they just witnessed Yuri Plisetsky in a last stroke of genius ratify a new jump never landed in competition before.

“He did it,” Yuuri breathes out. Victor grabs him around the shoulders and shakes him.

“ _ Did you see that? _ Did you see that?! He did it!” Victor shouts.

“He did it!” Yuuri beams, sparing Victor a glance, and he can feel his lips stretching wide in a disbelieving smile and the tears well up in his eyes because Yura did  _ so well _ , until the very end, he did so well. He can’t believe he’s lucky enough to have a son like him.

The program ends with Yura reaching up towards the ceiling as the last note echoes out into the arena. He holds it for a couple of seconds after the song has ended and the audience has erupted into screaming, before he fist pumps and screams, “Yes!”

He bows to the audience, smile wide and victorious, chin tipped high as flowers and stuffed cats rain around him. He picks a couple at random and skates towards the exit, where Yuuri and Victor are already waiting for him. And they may be old, and Yura maybe be past thirty, but that doesn’t stop Victor from physically picking him up and spinning around, yelling in euphoria as much as anyone else in this arena is.

“You did it!”

“Hell yeah! I want to see them break  _ that _ !” Yura crows.

“Yura!” they hear Mariko shout, and turn to see Otabek, getting over the fence separating the rink area from the VIP bleachers, putting her down, before vaulting over the railing himself.

Yuuri is going to get an earful from the ISU again but right now he couldn’t give more of a shit about it. He gives Yura his blade guards to snap on, which he does hastily, just in time for Mariko to barrel into him and for him to pick her up and throw her up in the air. “Did you see that, Masha?” he yells.

“That was so cool! You did it Yura!”

Otabek reaches them next and has no qualms in picking Yura up, Mariko in his arms and all, squeezing him and looking at him like Yura just made the sun rise just for him.

“You never stop surprising me,” he breathes out and that’s all it takes to tip Yura over into crying.

Victor and Yuuri look at each other, grinning, before they wrap their arms around both of them and squeeze their wonderful record breaking kids until someone comes to usher them towards the Kiss & Cry.

Yura breaks his own record and no one is surprised by it, but they still celebrate like they hadn’t been expecting it.

It feels a little surreal, after so long dedicating their lives first to their own skating, and then to Yura’s for it to suddenly be over. All of them successfully retired. No more competitions with Yura, no more clashes over costumes and music, no more celebrating every record break, every victory, and comforting every loss.

It’s the end of an era, in a lot of ways. Now all that’s left of their family on the ice is their legacy.

Yuuri doesn’t get too sad about it, not when the very next day just after the Exhibition Skate, the press hounds Yura outside the hotel, which is mildly annoying since neither Victor or Yura hadn’t seen him since yesterday at dinner, and Yura leans over into the microphone and says, “I owe a lot to my ex-boyfriend, Otabek Altin.” to the absolute surprise and stupefaction of the press.

And then, before anyone can react, Otabek looks at him fondly and says, “Stop saying it like that.” And then he leans into the microphone and says, “I’m his fiancé.”

Yura doesn’t even wait for him to fully finished speaking before he flips his ring finger for anyone to see and yells, “Suck it, bitches.”

Something big might be ending, but something else is starting, and he can’t wait to see what it brings them.

 

 

[plus]

“Why are you hiding?” Masha asks him, sitting cross-legged in front of him.

“I’m not hiding,” Yura tells her.

“Yunii, we’re under a  _ table _ ,” she says, which is honestly a very valid argument to make.

“So?”

“It’s your  _ reception _ , Yunii. Shouldn’t you be dancing?”

“It’s my second reception,” he reasons with her. Yuri has somehow acquired a stupidly big family, spanning across several continents. Big enough to justify throwing two different wedding receptions, one a little more intimate and only for close family in Hasetsu and another one in Kazakhstan. He let his parents plan the second one, since it was more for show than anything else, and he can say he’s regretting it right about now. “And I’ve danced plenty.”

“Are you hiding because Dad beat you at breakdancing again?”

“ _ No! _ ” he says. “And he didn’t beat me. It was a tie.”

“He beat you,” Mariko says, grinning cheekily at him.

Yuri reaches over and pinches her cheek. Masha has the absolute best cheeks to pinch. The Katsuki genes are undeniable in her. “When did you get so cheeky, huh?

Mariko turns her head and tries to bite his fingers, but Yuri pulls them out of the way in time and grabs both her cheeks with a hand, squishing them together.

“ _ Yunii _ ,” she whines, trying to pull him away by the wrist, and when that doesn’t work, she opens her mouth and tries to lick him.

Yuri laughs at her, keeping it up for a little longer before he lets her go.

Masha rubs her cheeks, and crawls over to sit on his lap, all a ploy, Yuri knows, so she can pinch his cheeks back, but he still lets her, and he tolerates the pinching.

“Why are you hiding down here, Yunii?” she asks again, when she’s had her revenge. She sounds concerned, and Yuri loves her for it, he really does.

“There’s just a lot of people outside, Masha. I feel like I can’t breathe.”

Yuri isn’t really a people person. He might like winning, and he might like it when people look at him and know he’s accomplished something, that he made something of himself. He likes to be the center of attention but only at a distance and on his own terms. A wedding reception doesn’t fit the criteria. Everyone always gets a little too close, and everyone wants a word with him, wants to congratulate him. He doesn’t even know one  _ third _ of the people around. It’s not the most comfortable situation for him. He’s managed to escape for most of the night by swooping Beka into dancing, but Beka is a  _ responsible _ man who doesn’t hide under tables when he gets overwhelmed, and had left Yuri alone to go greet people.

“You should’ve come to me,” Masha says. “I know the perfect place where no one will bother you that isn’t as pitiful as this.”

“I’m not pitiful,” Yuri says, flicking her nose.

Masha bats his hand away. “Yunii, you are  _ hiding _ under a  _ table _ at your own  _ wedding _ .”

Yuri tries to flick her nose again, but she catches his hand and turns away in time.

“Show me to this magic place where people won’t bother me, then,” he concedes.

Mariko crawls out of his lap and from under the table and Yuri follows her. He holds his breath expecting someone to notice him and try to stop him on the way, but Mariko holds his hand and starts pulling him, too quickly for anyone to really stop them. She walks like she has somewhere urgent to be, and Yuri can’t really see what kind of expression she’s making but it must be convincing enough that no one tries to stop her on her way.

She pulls him all the way across the venue into a little sectioned off area by a tiny gate filled with children’s toys and a couple of kids running around.

“No one bothers you if you’re hanging out with the babies,” Mariko tells him, sounding wise beyond her years.

Yuri leans down and kisses Masha’s forehead. “You’re a genius,” he tells her.

Masha beams at him. “You’re welcome. Text me if you need me to get a real adult to rescue you,” she tells him before running off back into the party.

Yuri should probably feel a little ridiculous that his little teenaged sister is more socially apt than he is, but he doesn’t really care right now, so he climbs over the baby gate and sits down in a big plush pillow shaped like a frog.

Yuri doesn’t recognize most of these kids which is a testament to how out of hand his current reception is.

“Yuri,” someone calls, and he turns to see Isabella sitting in a corner with a baby on her lap. “Would you mind looking after him for a bit? I’ve kind of been stuck here for… a while,” she sighs.

“Sure,” Yuri shrugs, reaching out his arms for the baby, and Isabella’s whole body slumps with relief. She carefully gets up and puts the baby on Yuri’s lap.

“Sorry, I know it’s your reception-“

“I already had one of these, don’t worry. Go have fun, make sure your husband isn’t making a dumbass of himself.”

“Thank you, Yuri,” she says, giving him a thankful smile, before she carefully climbs over the little gate and goes off to the party.

Yuri looks at the baby in his lap, bounces his knee a little bit. “This party sucks, huh?”

The baby blows spit bubbles at him.

“Yeah, you get it,” Yuri says, smiling a little.

There’s not a lot of kids here. Aside from the baby in his arms there are a couple of eight year olds and a little toddler playing in a little plastic house in a corner. Yuri keeps an eye on them and leans back against the wall, letting himself relax a little bit.

It might be muscle memory from when Mariko was born, but there’s something easy and almost soothing about holding a baby. He kind of misses it, a little bit.

“Do you wanna play with us?” one of the kids playing house asks, poking her head out of the window.

“Do I have to get up?” Yuri asks.

She frowns a little, then her eyes go wide with excitement. “We can play restaurants! You’re the client, okay?”

“Cool,” Yuri says.

The girl climbs through the window and runs to the corner, dragging a big plastic bag and upturning it just outside the playhouse, spilling plastic food and kitchen appliances everywhere. Yuri sends a thought out to whoever is going to have to clean up this mess.

“What do you want to eat?” she asks.

“Surprise me,” Yuri says since it’s the easy way out.

“Okay!” she says and starts commandeering the other two kids around.

The baby in his lap is trying very hard to close his fingers around Yuri’s bigger ones and pull Yuri’s hand to his mouth. Yuri lets him and gets his fingers covered in slobber. The baby tries to grasp Yuri’s ring finger and grab his ring off of it.

“That’s not leaving there anytime soon, buddy,” he tells the baby, trying not to smile too stupidly at the fact that he’s married,  _ finally _ .

His ring doesn’t glint in the light blindingly like his parents’ do, because Otabek knows Yuri very well, and yeah he could’ve gotten him gold or platinum, but instead he had gotten both of them  _ space rocks _ , which is honestly one of the coolest things Yuri has ever heard. Sure, diamonds are cool, but meteorites are way more metal.

It feels a little strange, to  _ not _ be preparing for the next season, to not have a next record to break or someone to beat. Yuri feels like he’s hanging on this weird limbo, this tipping moment in his life, and he’s not sure which way he’s going to fall yet. He’s not sure of anything at all. Except this. He’s been sure about himself and Beka for a very long time, and it’s the only thing that makes him think that he might not tip over at all, he might stand on his own two feet and keep walking.

“Here’s your food!” the girl announces, walking over with a little pan with an amalgamation of tiny plastic foods, some legos and a pencil thrown into it.

“Thanks, looks delicious,” he tells her. The girl stands there, expectantly, and so Yuri dutifully pretends to eat the plastic food, making yummy noises. It’s worth it by the way she beams, collecting the toys when she deems he’s done.

“I’m gonna make you another thing, okay?”

“Okay,” Yuri says and feels… something. He feels like he’s on the edge of a breakthrough, but it’s not quite within his grasp yet.

He thinks he has it more or less figured out about one hour later when Otabek comes to find him. The kids have gone from playing restaurants, to playing dragons, to playing house. In addition to a sleepy baby who is currently napping on Yuri’s slumped form, he also acquired a sleepy toddler who climbed into his lap demanding attention and is currently trying to fight off sleep and losing badly.

Otabek sits beside him and doesn’t demand to know why Yuri has disappeared from the party for over an hour, and he doesn’t demand for him to come back, and that’s why Yuri loves him.

“Tired?” Yuri asks, because Otabek looks tired. He feels bad for letting him handle all those people, but most of them are Otabek’s distant relatives.

Otabek leans over onto his shoulder. “Yeah. Are you having fun?”

“Yeah. I found the cool crowd.”

Otabek snorts. “Lucky you.”

“I’m extremely lucky,” Yuri says primly. “Have you seen my husband?”

“You sound like your dad,” Otabek says, but gives him a sweet look and Yuri knows he liked it. Otabek is into sappy crap.

“Which one?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.” There’s a big difference between sounding like Victor and sounding like Yuuri.

“Victor,” Otabek says, looking amused.

“Rude, how dare you! At least lie, and tell me I sound like the cool one.”

Otabek breathes out a laugh, and they just lean against each other quietly.

“Do you think we can hide here until everyone else leaves?” Yuri chances.

“Not likely. Your dads started drinking, so we’re probably going to have to rescue the guests from a Katsuki-Nikiforov show.”

Yuri sighs heavily. Why do they have to be like this? Where did Yuri go wrong in his life that the universe thinks his parents getting smashed at functions and losing clothes is the punishment he deserves?

“Tragically, I can’t move ever again,” Yuri tells him. “You’ll have to do it alone.”

“Coward,” Otabek says.

Yuri can move just enough without disturbing any of the babies on him to flick one of Otabek’s ears, so he does it.

“You’re the one who married a coward, how does that make you feel?”

“Have you  _ seen _ my husband?” Otabek throws back at him and Yuri laughs, flicks his big dumbo ears again.

Yuri lets a beat or two pass before he says. “I think I know what I want to do,” he says slowly. Otabek looks over at him and doesn’t interrupt him, waits Yuri out until he can say the words. Otabek is very good at waiting. “I think… I want to follow in my dad’s footsteps.”

Otabek gets this little crease in his nose as he frowns. “Coaching?” he asks.

Yuri shakes his head minutely, looks him straight in the eye and says, “Being a trophy husband.”

Otabek doesn’t laugh at him, he just looks intensely at Yuri for a moment, probably trying to figure out if he’s serious or not, and then lays back down.

“Sounds good. You’re pretty enough.”

Yuri snorts. “Thanks. Now I know why you married me, you knew I’d look good on your arm.”

“You got me,” Otabek says with absolutely no inflection. “Damn.”

Yuri flicks his ear again. It might be a bit of a habit, but in his defense, they’re easy targets.

“Compensate me. I need a trophy husband starting kit.”

“Sure,” Otabek says easily. “What’s in those?”

“According to Grandma Vivi and Dad, a fainting couch, an unlimited supply of expensive alcohol, maybe a marble bust or two, some incredibly spoiled pets, and one of these,” he says, pointing to the kids laying on him.

“All of that is doable except one,” Otabek says. Yuri holds his breath. “We’re absolutely not getting a bust, we have two cats, Yura, that’s asking for disaster.”

Yuri blows out his breath. “What if they’re busts of cats, though?”

“No busts,” Otabek says firmly.

“Why do you hate busts?” Yuri says, pretending his heart hasn’t climbed all the way to his throat and is beating a staccato rhythm there.

“I’ve talked to Yuuri. He’s strangely compelling when he’s tipsy and going off about how much of a nuisance busts are.”

Yuuri’s hatred for busts is almost as legendary as Dad’s hatred for ugly ties.

“Fine, no busts,” Yuri concedes. “I’ll just have to learn to live without them,” he says flatly.

Otabek huffs out an amused little laugh. They lay there just enjoying each other’s company and a reprieve from the wedding party, and Yuri knows they’ll probably need to talk about this, about what Yuri really wants to do with himself now that he’s done with skating, and about kids, but they have all the time in the world to talk about it. There’s no rush. There never was any rush with Beka.

As nice as it is to just lay together, someone comes to check up on the kids and Yuri and Otabek are forced back into being sociable adults, which Yuri hates more than anything, but this time Otabek stays by his side, and they’re lucky enough that Yuri’s parents are drunk enough to pull all the attention to them.

“Who do you think will start stripping first?” Yuri asks, sipping on his wine and watching his parents dance around each other in the center of the dance floor.

“Yuuri,” Otabek says.

“What? Dad is obviously the right answer. He’s never been able to keep clothes on to save his life,” Yuri tells him.

Otabek looks over, raises an eyebrow, “Wanna bet on it?”   
  


**Author's Note:**

> the funniest fucking thing to come out of this whole au is the fact that Minami is technically that one kid who just really wants to fuck your dad, and everytime I remember that I absolutely lose my shit
> 
> [also when I think of future idol Machan, I kind of picture Shin Ryujin who is the cutest fucking baby and I would absolutely die for her, but when she starts performing she's an absolute monsters, here's her audition she did for mixnine a idol group survival show she did](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JT5GlbNLa4&t=2s)
> 
> [i'mst here on the tumblrs](http://crossroadswrite.tumblr.com)


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